The Trust Alliance New Zealand Incorporated (TANZ) is a non-profit industry consortium governed and operated by its members. We provide tools and protocols to enable a trusted data network. We believe in a decentralised approach, to enable easy data capture, and protection & permissioned sharing across the primary sector.
TANZ is an advocate for self-sovereign identity and an enabler for a decentralised data management. We aim to create a future where farmers are in control of their own data through the use of decentralised digital identities, verifiable credentials, and digital wallets.
TANZ is an enabler for the food and fibre industry to move from selling based on brand promise to brand proof. We want to enable farmers to show digitial proofs of sustainable farming. These proofs can be used to ensure and increase international market access, unlock better financial access and turn farm compliance into real value.
TANZ is owned and governed by those who use it, providing opportunity and profit potential for all members, rather than a winner takes all model. Our members and supporters include many of New Zealand’s public and private sector primary producers, growers, exporters, retailers and service providers.
TANZ strives to enable self-controlled, trusted data sharing; reducing the data duplication that impacts farmers’ compliance-driven work (or activities), such as Farm Environment Planning or ESG reporting. Overall, TANZ aims to support more New Zealand farmers and growers in meeting compliance, to ultimately facilitate more sustainable outcomes.
To do this we are developing a trusted digital framework to share data in a secure way; a decentralised approach that will allow farmers and growers to capture, manage and share their data while also controlling and protecting it.
Chris Claridge has an extensive business and academic background and is passionate about how the primary sector can embrace the digital world. Chris is the Chair of the Trust Alliance New Zealand Inc (TANZ) non-profit industry agricultural consortium. TANZ is an advocate and enabler for decentralised data management aiming to create a future where farmers are in control of their own data through decentralised digital identities, verifiable credentials, and digital wallets.
Chris has a background in primary sector production, marketing and export. He was the Chief Executive of Potatoes New Zealand Inc representing growers, processors and exporters for seven years. He has established primary sector businesses including Claridge’s Organics in the 1980’s one of New Zealand’s first organic food exporting businesses. In the 1990’s he established ID Digital Media, a full-service advertising company specialising in Web 1.0 and digital communications. He also founded Carrickmore, a dairy export company specialising in marketing infant formula, at the same time he helped establish the New Zealand Infant Formula Exporters Association. The Association grew to 26 companies representing an export value of $60 million before being adversely affected by changes in the regulatory environment. Chris has the academic background to supplement his practical experience having graduated with a Masters in Biotechnology he became a Dean of Business Studies and a Senior Lecturer in Management.
Christina’s passion is in using digital technology to help farmers and growers make nutritious food as sustainably and efficiently as possible – but also to demonstrate the care NZ food producers are taking to do the right thing by their environments for future generations. Christina studied environmental and biological sciences, and her career initially focused on sustainable agriculture science at The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research, and advice on the ground as a Farm Environment Planner. However, she soon recognised the huge opportunity that digital technology could play in farm sustainability, and the make or break customer experience role that farm data can play when engaging farmers with digital tools. There’s a lot of data involved in food production and associated sustainability reporting – and a common frustration of farmers and growers is spending too much time with data in front of a computer, meaning less time doing what they love…farm!
Christina pivoted her career to lead product development teams for Ballance’s MyBallance ordering and reporting platform, and MitAgator farm environment planning tool, which uses farm management and geospatial data to identify hot spots of environmental losses across the farm, and the best mitigations to help farmers make reductions. More recently, she’s helped shape some of the future digital innovations in Ballance’s $25m SFFF programme co-funded with MPI, and now leads an IS team of geospatial, BI, and data science and machine learning analysts focused on using innovation and a continuous improvement mindset to solve farmer and business challenges. Christina’s team are also custodians of farm data at Ballance, develop and support an increasing range of data integrations with several ag-tech companies in New Zealand, and are constantly looking at new ways to use data to create new value for our farmer and grower Co-Operative shareholder customers, to help them tell their food story to the world.
Trust Alliance NZ Incorporated – 50072511 NZBN: 9429049549539
Connected Accountants, L1 South British Building, 326 Lambton Quay, Wellington 6142, New Zealand